


The Rest

by JaneTurenne



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Gallifrey (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-10
Updated: 2011-08-10
Packaged: 2017-10-22 11:14:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/237452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaneTurenne/pseuds/JaneTurenne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Survivor of the Last Great Time War' is, it turns out, a very inaccurate term.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Rest

**Author's Note:**

> Beta thanks to tardiscrash.

'Survivor of the Last Great Time War' is, it turns out, a very inaccurate term.

*

Braxiatel does everything within his power to stop the war from coming. He risks a temporal paradox, the one breach of time he's never dared before. He gives everything he has, unpicks the web of time at the seams, but each alteration only delivers up future selves with harder, grimmer brows. Then comes the terrifying moment when they stop showing up at all, and he stops sleeping, and swallows his panic, and fights that much harder. He fights right up until the day the sky splits open and the Daleks descend, and then there's no fight in him anymore.

“We cannot win,” he tells her. “Believe me, Madam President, I've tried. This war is already lost. Run. Please, save yourself. Let me save you. Come with me, Romana. Please.”

She looks at him like something on the underside of her shoe. “If you're going,” she says, and he hears her childhood name in each wintry syllable, “go.”

He goes.

*

In the contained environment of the Collection, Braxiatel is protected from the force that rips his species out of time itself. He isn't among the screaming mass dragged pitilessly into the abyss.

But he feels it.

*

In the normal line of protocol on the planetoid known as the Braxiatel Collection, Mr. Braxiatel himself falls absolutely dead last for candidates to explore a mysterious, newly-arrived shuttlecraft which, their scanners display, contains one living humanoid. The normal line of protocol, however, fails to make allowance for mysterious, newly-arrived shuttlecrafts with the Seal of Rassilon and the personal crests of the Houses of Heartshaven and Dvora discreetly adorning their fuselages.

“Hello?” he calls, as he enters. “Are you conscious? Can you hear me?”

She's sitting so still, he doesn't see her until they're face to face. And then he's certain the scanners must have been mistaken, because she looks half-skeleton already, and she hasn't so much as twitched.

“Romana?”

Her eyes flick to his.

Irving Braxiatel is a collector of everything, including unique experiences. He files this moment quietly away in his memory, under 'what it feels like when absolute joy coincides with unthinkable terror.'

She looks away, and he starts breathing again.

*

Mr. Braxiatel's guest, the servants are told, is to be treated as though she were the most important person in the universe. There is one suite on the Collection grander even than Mr. Braxiatel's own, and she is installed in it. The furnishings in every room seem chosen to set off her color to greatest advantage—or they would, if there were any color in her anymore, any light in her eyes or luster in her hair or pink in her cheeks. The unfathomably enormous wardrobe is full of clothing that just happens to precisely suit her type—and each scrap of it would be her size, as well, if only she wasn't starved away nearly to nothingness. The almost-congruence between herself and the place is ghastly, unnerving, and the more fanciful servants sometimes think they see her smile about it, though only from the corners of their eyes.

It's not that she makes trouble. On the contrary, they've never met anyone so docile. She calmly submits to be bathed and dressed whenever anyone suggests it, to be discreetly prodded by an army of medical specialists, to eat a polite bite or two of anything set before her. But her eyes never focus, and when left alone she does nothing but sit perfectly still, and the only time she speaks is in the darkest part of night. In the hours before dawn, her screams seem to echo from one end of the Collection to the other, even though the walls are soundproofed, and the manor unimaginably vast.

Mr. Braxiatel goes to see her every day. He speaks to her as one might to an old friend in a coma—genial, familiar, and with no expectation of a response, and no more response than he expects. Sometimes he suggests a walk in the gardens, or a picnic on one of the numberless porticoes, or a stroll through the galleries. She accompanies him like a shadow by his side, unquestioning, and returns to her rooms with no more comment than when she left them. It's only as the weeks pass that they notice that he never offers her his arm, and that, though he sits close beside her on the settee, he never touches her at all, not once. He doesn't seem to dare.

None of them blame him.

They notice other things, too. The way the strain begins to tell on him, the way he grows paler and thinner even as she gains weight and color. Every single one of them—even the _least_ fanciful—entertains the notion that she is leaching the life from him, only gaining by taking away.

The alterations aren't quick, but her improving health isn't the only one. She starts to take walks of her own accord, stalking the grounds like a silent phantom. They find her sometimes with a book in hand, or considering one of the Collection's numberless _objets d'art_. The nightmares seem to lessen, or at least the nights of screaming grow fewer and further between. And she begins to look at people, just every now and then. When they've spent so long thinking of her as vacant, those eyes come as a shock. They aren't gentle a bit. They're sharp, analytical and inquiring. And even though her emptiness seemed like the worst of it, before, even though that seemed like the force that made her so unsettling, those eyes make everything a hundred times worse. Anyone unfortunate enough to get in their path leaves it feeling as though she's just sorted through their soul like it was their knicker drawer, and pulled out every single indiscretion and weakness and petty little secret. Those eyes leave _them_ feeling like the empty ones, in some kind of humorless cosmic joke.

She looks at Mr. Braxiatel more than anyone else, and the rest of them wonder how he stands it. Not that she looks at him _often_ —only when she seems dead certain it'll catch him by surprise. They've always thought he _was_ the perfect gentleman, before, not just a man putting suavity on like fresh linen. But they watch something in him crack, just infinitesimally, from the force of her eyes, and for the first time, they begin to entertain a doubt about him, one that finally bears fruit a year to the day after her arrival.

That day, she stares at Mr. Braxiatel from the moment he walks in, and doesn't stop. He bears up under it as well as anyone could; it's five minutes before he looks away, at anything other than her. For five minutes after that, he manages to keep speaking to her, the even-tempered speeches that always seem like one half of a dialogue, and not like a man talking to himself. But she never stops staring, not even for a moment, and his speech slowly drains away, leaving him facing her in silence, helpless under her eyes.

"Out," says Mr. Braxiatel, loudly, after a very long pause.

The Lady (the only name they dare call her, though they know the real one) thinks he means her, for a moment, and her eyes widen briefly, the most conscious display of emotion any of them have ever seen from her. And then her mask settles again, as he turns his head.

"Out," says Mr. Braxiatel, to the small army of doctors, nurses, housemaids, servers and assorted staff who populate the Lady's chambers, following orders that she should never be left completely alone. "All of you. Leave us alone. Get out."

They exchange glances, and one by one, shuffle to the door. But the curiosity is insatiable, and they keep their eyes on _her_ until the last possible moment.

If they didn't know better, they would each of them swear that her expression is one of triumph.

*

"Please, Romana." He is on his knees, weeping into her lap. "I cannot endure this silence any longer. Something. Say something. Say _anything_."

She stands. From his position on the floor, she seems to tower above him, awesome and terrible and beautiful as a storm at sea.

"I am your penance, Irving Braxiatel," says Romana, and smiles.

*

The door opens. The milling crowd in the hall look in surprise at the figure who emerges.

"Cardinal Braxiatel is feeling unwell," she says. "See to it that his needs are attended to. If one of you could please direct me to the office of his chief secretary? I will be taking on the business of managing the Collection while Braxiatel is indisposed."

Every face in the hall stares in slack-jawed amazement. The Lady turns with perfect calm to the bug-eyed young page boy beside her. "The office of Braxiatel's chief secretary?" she repeats, politely, but with a firmness that will not be denied.

The boy points a shaking finger down the corridor.

"Thank you," she says, and walks sedately out of view.

*

When they find him, Mr. Braxiatel is pale as ash. The doctors poke and prod him, but find nothing wrong. He is docile and compliant as the servants fuss and flutter around him. He eats and drinks what is placed before him without question or complaint. When left alone, he sits still, and stares, with the expression of a man who has lived through unspeakable horrors.

"The negotiations on the Elgin Marbles," the Lady Romana is saying, in a room on the opposite side of the Collection, "are we certain that this is the _best_ possible price? I think perhaps if you organized a meeting between myself and the sellers involved, we might come to a more reasonable conclusion." She smiles, a hard little smile. "I think you'll find that I have...a certain facility in the art of persuasion."

*

Within a generation, the greatest living repository of culture in the universe—which only continues to expand and grow—has come to be known only as The Collection. For another generation after that, the name of the strange invalid living in the finest suite remains in memory, but it fades like a flower out of bloom, and soon only one person calls him anything other than The Gentleman. No matter how busy she may be, the Lady Romana always finds the time to call on the poor man, every single day, taking him to walk in the galleries, or the gardens, or to picnic on one of the numberless porticoes. She keeps up a comfortable stream of talk, and never seems in the slightest disconcerted by his lack of response. On the contrary, she flowers in his presence. And yet for all her kindness, he only seems to shrink when she is near.

In time, he becomes a fable—the spirit of The Collection. The superstitious among him claim they sometimes hear him screaming in the night. But the sensible claim that must be nonsense. He is the survivor of a terrible war, they whisper, one that ravaged time and space, and stole his wits, and broke his hearts. He is an oddity, foreign and faraway, and the Lady Romana calls him by a strange name.

He is Irving Braxiatel, and he never speaks another word again.


End file.
